Which Value x Best Represents a Sample x1, ..., xn: Utility-Based Approach Under Interval Uncertainty

Authors

Andrzej Pownuk, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Vladik Kreinovich, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow

Publication Date

1-2017

Comments

Technical Report: UTEP-CS-17-05

To appear in Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Constraint Programming and Decision Making CoProd'2017, El Paso, Texas, November 3, 2017.

Abstract

In many practical situations, we have several estimates x₁, ..., x_n of the same quantity x. In such situations, it is desirable to combine this information into a single estimate x. Often, the estimates come with interval uncertainty, i.e., instead of the exact values x_i, we only know the intervals [x_i] containing these values. In this paper, we formalize the problem of finding the combined estimate x as the problem of maximizing the corresponding utility, and we provide an efficient (quadratic-time) algorithm for computing the resulting estimate.